Retreat Report

Last week I was at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts for my annual retreat. I've been there for retreat many times, but had not been for twelve years (living in Italy, Covid, and so on). It was a very good week with lots of time for prayer, reading, and reflection.

The monks made some improvements to the retreat house over its Covid closure, including an expansion of the retreatants' dining room, which used to be a little cramped when there was a full house. They also cleaned up the inner courtyard, which, if I remember correctly, was rather overgrown before. It's lovely now and you can sit out there on a nice day.

I had one of the rooms on the west side of the retreat house that have a little tiny enclosed backyard, I guess so you can pretend you're a Carthusian. The weather was good all week so I was able to leave my back door open at night (there's a screen door) and enjoy the cool air and the sounds of nature.

The back door to my room from my little backyard

It was good to see the monks again, and I recognized a few of them from past visits, though I don't know their names for the most part. They had aged, as I suppose I have as well. One monk introduced himself to me when we were cleaning up after lunch one day, and explained how he had followed his brother, a TOR Franciscan, into religious life. He said that he had been in the monastery for fourteen years, which means he may have been a novice the last time I was on retreat there. He then explained how he had only recently been ordained a priest, within the last year. I thought of asking him for his blessing, but I was worried about the other retreatants getting the idea and it becoming a scene. But maybe I should have done it. As old Fr. John Proppe, may he rest in peace, once told me, "The blessing of a new priest is worth wearing out two horses."

I saw that there was a novice. Novices stick out in choir with the white scapular. On Thursday there also appeared in choir a tall young man in secular clothes, with a beard that would make a Capuchin novice proud. Maybe he's discerning. One time when I was walking into church I saw the novice helping him find his place in the book, and that gave me delight. Let's pray for the two of them and thank God for their vocations.

The meals were in silence, of course. On my past retreats we have listened to an audio book, but this time it was music. On one day we started listening to N.T. Wright's Paul: A Biography, but after that it was back to music. There was no explanation for this. I was a little disappointed because I had found the beginning of the book entertaining. Then I thought I would buy the book and finish it myself when I got home, but I haven't done it yet. I have to decide if I'm curious enough for $15.95 (Kindle edition). Maybe the monks and the publisher are in cahoots. They get you hooked on a book, and so forth.

There were two special events during the week. The first was the solemnity of the dedication of the abbey church on the first full day of the retreat.

At the first vespers of this observance, which was the first evening of the retreat, we retreatants were pretty confused about where we were in the psalter, but we seemed to have figured it out by lauds in the morning. I overheard someone saying that there were certain candles around the church that are only lit on this day each year.

The second special event was the resumption of communion under both kinds, presumably post-Covid. While the priest monks were vesting for Mass on the last morning of the retreat, a monk approached us retreatant-concelebrants in the corner of the sacristy where the albs and stoles are set up for retreatants. (When you register for a retreat, you are asked your height so that an appropriate alb can be set out for you.) The monk instructed us that, starting on that day, we would not receive by intinction, but should consume the host and then drink from the chalice. This went fine for us concelebrants when the time came, but something seemed to go wrong with the logistics of the communion of the other monks and the people in the visitors' galleries. I saw the abbot gesturing to the various priest monks who were ministering Holy Communion as if to redirect them to certain places. He also seemed to be trying to get the attention of the principal celebrant as he descended to the monks and retreatants who were lined up, but in vain. At this the abbot let out what seemed like a sigh of resignation. So it's not just friars, I thought. At that moment I recalled a previous conversation with the monk who was the principal celebrant, in which he exclaimed, "I am a free dancer." It seemed like an odd thing for a Trappist to say. That story is back in this post. 

There was a full house of eleven retreatants. Five of us were priests, or at least five concelebrated at Mass. Of the other six I gathered that two or three were permanent deacons. There seemed to be a couple of groups of two or three on retreat together. Retreatants there together always means more talking, unfortunately, and we were admonished about this in the middle of the week. It was far, however, from the worst group in this regard I have been with on retreat at the abbey. That's another story. I seemed to remember that at previous last breakfasts before departure we were allowed or instructed to talk so one could meet the others he had been praying with (and hopefully for) all week, but in any case it didn't happen this time. It was the usual music, so I finished the retreat without getting to know any of the other retreatants. I prayed for them, though, during the week, for their openness to and discernment of the graces God desired for them during our time at the abbey.

Bl. Giacinto Longhin on the Universal Call to Holiness

Today we have something of an embarrassment of riches in the Capuchin calendar, with two optional memorials of Capuchin blesseds. There's Blessed James of Ghazir (1875-1954), who was called 'the Lebanese St. Vincent de Paul', as well as Blessed Giacinto Longhin (1863-1936) who was bishop of Treviso, Italy.

Just for fun, I decided to translate Blessed Giacinto's reading for the Office of Readings today. (You see, here in the anglosphere, our superiors don't love us enough to provide officially updated Capuchin liturgical propers. It's one area, anyway, in which the Italians are ahead of us.)

Holiness in the Christian and religious life is an obligation. Our ignorance and acedia makes us believe that holiness isn’t possible for us, because we imagine ourselves in ecstasy, as if to be saints we need to have the gift of raptures or of visions or of prophecy or of miracles; we imagine ourselves on the cross, as if it were necessary to make great fasts or perform austerities and penances with the discipline unto blood, with hair shirts, and so on. It’s a trick.

Holiness consists in simpler things that are within everyone’s reach. It is not said to anyone: whip yourself, fast, go into ecstasy … no, this is asked of no one. It is said only that you love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and that you love your neighbor as yourself. It is in this that all the perfection and true holiness of the Christian life is found. 

Who in the world can say that they can’t love the Lord? To please him by doing his will shown to us in the commandments of the Decalogue, by the holy Church, and by our legitimate superiors? Who can say, I am not able to avoid deliberate venial sin and failures in charity, humility and obedience?

St. Thomas, to a sister who asked how she could become a saint, said: If you wish! Do you understand, my dear Maria? If you will to become a saint, it’s done. Grace will not be lacking for you and with grace we are all-powerful.

Moments of Grace

Update to this old post below. As part of my World Day of Prayer for Vocations homily this weekend, I used the story of the kid in the library. Just for fun, I looked him up to see if I could find out what he is up to thirty years later. I found his LinkedIn page. He's an employment counselor. How fitting!

Old post:

The other day there was a program on TV about St. Maria Goretti. At one point it showed a picture of the priest who gave Maria her first Holy Communion. He looked like a regular, unremarkable priest. I was thinking about him a little. In all of the joys and struggles of his life, whatever they were, in all of the highs and lows of his vocation, that particular moment, when he ministered first Holy Communion to Maria Goretti, was probably one of the most important moments of his life. What I mean is that it was so from God's perspective, from the point of view of the larger economies of grace.

I think that we're often unaware of the way God wishes to make instruments of us in particular moments with one another. God knows that it works better this way, without the interior tangles of pious self-awareness. In the economies by which God pours out his own sanctity in the world, we never know how God is making use of us.

Here's an example from my own life. When I was a senior in college I was considering religious life. There was another kid among the philosophy majors who had been a seminarian. I didn't really know him. One night we ran into each other in the library. He asked me if it was true, that I was thinking of entering religious life. I said that it was. "Good luck with your vocation," he said.

For him it was surely an offhand comment, but for me it made a big difference. Your vocation. It made the whole business real. I had been considering religious life, for sure, but as my idea. The idea of being a Franciscan friar attracted me, and so I was thinking of trying it out. I remember standing there after the guy walked away, jarred by the idea of having a vocation, a call from God. He had named something for me with a clarity that I hadn't known. God used him to accomplish an important grace for me at that moment, probably without his having any idea.

This is why it's good to pray that God guide our speech and interaction with others, and that we work whatever spiritual practices we need to stay open and attentive when we are with one another. Nevertheless, we may not be aware of the graces God works through us, and mercifully so. God keeps us ignorant of these movements a lot of the time, saving us not only from temptations to vanity but also keeping us from messing up the plainness of grace with the clumsiness of self-conscious piety. So we may get to heaven and find out that the most graced moments of our lives were things we hadn't even thought about. In fact, we may as well presume that this will be the case; it will help us to be humble on this pilgrimage and keep us from taking what we know of ourselves as graced before God, which is very little, too seriously.

The Easter Itinerancy

(An old post updated)

Every year on this holy night I reflect on the grace of itinerancy that the Holy Spirit has given me; only twice in my whole baptism have I been in the same place for the Easter Vigil for more than two years in a row. When I think about all the places I've been for the Vigil, it puts me in awe of God and in a state of gratitude for my journey.

Here's my Easter Vigil history:

• 2023: Annunciation, Crestwood, Yonkers, NY (concelebrant)
• 2022: Our Lady of Sorrows, White Plains, NY
• 2021: Our Lady of Sorrows, White Plains, NY
  
  
• 2020: (COVID-19 pandemic, prayed what is provided in the Liturgy of the Hours for qui sollemni Vigilæ paschali non interfuerunt)
• 2019: Basilica of St. Teresa of Ávila, Rome
• 2018: Basilica of St. Camillo de Lellis, Rome
• 2017: Basilica of St. Camillo de Lellis, Rome (in the 25th year of my baptism)
• 2016: Capuchin General Curia, Rome (concelebrant)
  
  
  

Advent Ramble

Advent brings a new year of grace with its promise of a new beginning for each of us. May we enter into this privileged season that the Church calls a time of "devout and expectant delight." (Universal Norms for the Liturgical Year)

In my early experience of religious life it was beat into us that Advent wasn't a penitential season. Like a lot of what I was taught early on, this needs more nuance. Certainly Advent is a time for metanoia, for turning our attention toward the One who is our deepest delight, to a stance of devout expectation for the God who is arriving fresh in each moment. As John the Baptist will cry out on the Second Sunday of Advent, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

At hand. The Kingdom is perpetually about to be. This is the patient and humble God who awaits the friendship of those who will surrender to his kingship in their hearts in whatever the next moment is for them, whether it be prayer or work or rest, or especially a moment of encounter with another soul.

This attentiveness to the God who is arriving, this adventitious God, is the spiritual work of those of us who live in this graced and blessed time in between the first and second comings of Christ. Advent invites us to a contemplative attentiveness in this in-betweenness, as we look back with joy to the humility of the incarnation and forward to the glory of the final fulfillment of everything in Christ.

This attentiveness in quiet prayer is what makes a space for God to be born anew in our own hearts. And if our hearts are sometimes dark or cold, let us rejoice all the more, for that is just the sort of place God wills to be born.

As one of my Capuchin formation directors told us at the beginning of Advent, "Let us begin again for the first time."

Preparing the Way of the Lord

“John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” (Luke 3:3)

John the Baptist is one of the central characters of Advent; he is the Forerunner who prepares the way of the Lord. By repentance and the forgiveness of sins we too prepare ourselves as a place for the Lord to be born anew. By repentance, because when we let go of sin and attachment we make room in our minds and hearts, preparing a space for God within. By receiving forgiveness, because it is by experiencing God’s mercy that we are able to mirror that mercy to others; knowing God’s mercy in our own lives, we become ourselves the way that the Lord prepares for divine mercy to come into the world.

(reflection prepared for our vocation office's social media)

Life After Traditionis Custodes

The other day I received a request: would I be willing, at some point in the near future, to celebrate a Mass in the Extraordinary Form?

First of all, I presume what was meant was would I celebrate a Mass according to the 1962 Missal, what was called the 'Extraordinary Form' before Traditionis custodes.

As I started to consider the request I came to realize that the motu proprio doesn't seem to address my situation. The letter gives direction to two kinds of priests:

Art. 4. Priests ordained after the publication of the present Motu Proprio, who wish to celebrate using the Missale Romanum of 1962, should submit a formal request to the diocesan Bishop who shall consult the Apostolic See before granting this authorization.

Art. 5. Priests who already celebrate according to the Missale Romanum of 1962 should request from the diocesan Bishop the authorization to continue to enjoy this faculty.

I take the sense of Article 5 as celebrating in this way regularly or habitually. I have never celebrated Mass in the Extraordinary Form publicly. Ordained right around the time of Summorum pontificum, I learned the older form, curious as I was about this new faculty granted by Pope Benedict, practiced, and celebrated privately a few times. But I haven't done so since leaving the parish assignment in 2010 (I had access to a number of fitting altars there). I also tried to learn the Breviarium Romanum and prayed some of my hours from the Breviarium Romano-Seraphicum sometimes, especially for the little hours, until on my reading of Universae Ecclesiae I decided that such mixing and matching wasn't really allowed.

In the end I'm glad for these inspirations because I learned a lot about the Mass and even got free chant lessons at one of the Extraordinary Form groups in Boston during my period in the doctoral program at Boston College. And perhaps the "mutual enrichment" that Benedict hoped for in Summorum pontificum has thus been accomplished in my priesthood. Given the closeness I feel to the Pope Emeritus, to know that would give me encouragement and comfort.

So where does Traditionis custodes leave a priest found already ordained upon its publication but not celebrating according to what was, until that day, called the Extraordinary Form? I'm honestly not sure. Am I like a new priest, needing the permission of the bishop confirmed by the Holy See in order to celebrate with the 1962 Missal, or am I like a priest who was celebrating this way upon the publication of the letter, needing only the authorization of the bishop? Or am I, as I suspect on my reading of the spirit of Traditionis custodes, neither of these things, but simply someone who has lost the faculty to celebrate in the older form, period, and without any justification for seeking to have it back.

Comments welcome.